Month: October 2022

“Alle Toten Fliegen Hoch: Amerika” or “All the Dead Fly Up: America” by Joachim Meyerhoff is a raw, nonchalant, and emotional description of the author’s year in the US as a German exchange student.

The book is non-fictional and recounts things that happened to the author who is now a German actor, director, and writer when he was a high school student. It takes the reader on a rollercoaster from ecstatic, great moments in the narrator’s life down to more tragic, difficult ones and back up to moments that can only be described as unexpected and bizarre.

The story begins in Germany. Meyerhoff is living his life there as a normal German high school student. The first part of the book paints a picture of the narrator’s life and character. He is just finding out about the exchange program. Meyerhoff describes the application process and some of the thoughts he had that influenced his decisions.

Once he finally makes it to the US, a place called Laramie in Wyoming to be specific, he meets his host family and gets to know them. Later on, he describes his first day at an American high school and the teachers he met there.

He goes on to recount many things that happened to him, like a trip to a prison that he went on with one of his teachers and an awkward date he had with a girl. But he also mentions his thoughts and impressions throughout most of the book.

Those thoughts and impressions are largely relatable to someone who has done an exchange year in a different country or who has generally moved to a different country for an extensive amount of time. The wonder, curiosity, and confusion that Meyerhoff describes as he sees and experiences Americans and their way of life around him are relatable to someone who is in a similar situation.

Settling into this new, different life in a new place with new people and a new language can be hard and Meyerhoff manages to describe that transition very well, using descriptions of everything around him but also himself. Throughout the book, he changes as a person as well and mentions some of those changes to the reader when he notices them himself.

Others become clear just by reading the story which is mostly possible due to the raw and direct way that the book is written. Meyerhoff is very open and nonchalant in his descriptions of people, their behavior, and their appearance, whether they are wearing clothes or not. The same goes for his descriptions of himself and his thoughts. He doesn’t seem to hold back or hide anything from the reader.

Due to that and some experiences that can only really be described as strange and unexpected, this book has a raw, strange, and nonchalant tone. It is funny sometimes and makes the reader feel for the narrator at other times.

That rollercoaster of experiences and emotions is what makes the story relatable to someone who has gone through that experience of moving to a different place.

As someone who has been through that experience myself, I enjoyed reading someone else’s different but similar perspective and rate this book an 8 out of 10 stars.

Certainly, everyone has at one point in their life had a dream job; something they really want to do no matter how unrealistic it may be. In my case, I had several of these dreams throughout my life. The first one I can remember was to become an astronaut and go to space. Then I wanted to be an inventor and follow Da Vinci’s example. For a few years, I found my great passion for soccer, and I wanted to go pro. My last and by far longest desired job, however, was and to this day is to work in the film industry.

And I am lucky; I have a talent for almost all of these things. I am what is called a jack of all trades, master of none.

The idea of having a great variety of talents sounds great. Adding a long list of interests into the mix should be a good combination. Indeed, my great variety of interests paired with a great variety of talents gives me many options and opportunities to try and do all kinds of things. In school, I was fairly good in almost all of my classes without having to put much work into them. The same is true outside of school. I play soccer and I am decent at it. I like to draw, and I am decent at it. I play the flute and I am decent at it. There are other examples too.

I must have been around ten years old when I first listened to the audiobook version of Stephen Hawking’s “George’s Secret Key to the Universe”. I remember lounging on the blue carpet in the middle of our small living room with my head propped up on my hands. The story fascinated me not because of the plot or the characters but because of the planets and stars that were described in the story. I found myself flicking through the book version afterward to read up on any information about space that I could find there. I quickly decided that I wanted to become an astronaut. I wanted to go to space and explore planets, comets, and stars. Black Holes were particularly fascinating to me. Of course, at that point, I didn’t know what goes into becoming an astronaut and I also didn’t know whether I was actually good enough.

Now, about ten years later, I can safely say that I am not anywhere close to becoming an astronaut. But that does not have to do with the fact that I had no talent. I just found more interesting things.

My talent alone, however, is nowhere near enough for me to become a professional athlete, artist, or musician. My talents aren’t good enough to make me great at any of these things. Being great requires work for me.

I recall a conversation with my mother that I had a few years ago. I had brought up the topic of becoming a professional soccer player. As expected, she rejected the idea of me playing soccer professionally as soon as I mentioned it. Of course, she was worried about the fact that women don’t get paid well in sports, but I could tell that wasn’t her only or even her main concern. She doubted me. She doubted that I was good enough and she doubted that I would put in the work to become good enough.

For the next year or so, I went outside regardless of the weather and practiced my skills with the ball. I went on five-kilometer runs regularly and I frequently worked out at a gym. That was the fittest I had ever been.

That dream slowly changed when a different one materialized out of nowhere. Actually, that new dream had always been there somewhere, lying dormant in the depths of my consciousness. Something had triggered it, maybe it had to do with the fact that I found out, my cousin was studying movie directing. It was like a signal to me that working in movies was in fact not impossible and unrealistic.

Ever since I have had one career wish: I wanted to make movies. I knew that without a doubt. My father didn’t.

I told him about my dream on a few occasions but one in particular sticks out to me. This was probably the first time that I had mentioned that dream of mine to him. His reaction was immediate doubt and questioning my creativity. He had decided for himself that people who make movies must be creative. So, he told me that I was not creative enough. It was a punch to the gut for me. I wanted to do this so bad, I had never considered that I might not be good enough at it.

I had always known that my parents were very realistic people with a tendency to pessimism. On top of that, my father is an intelligent man. His words carried an enormous weight for me at that time which made his doubt that much more gut-wrenching and hurtful. But I am a stubborn person with a dream.

Despite that conversation, I sat down and googled which free video editing software there was. I downloaded one and started playing with it. The best way for me to learn almost anything is to learn by doing. So, I imported a video into the application and changed various settings, cut it, and added text. It didn’t take me long to pick up on the basics of the software.

Next, I figured out how to write scripts. I found out quickly that I am, in fact, fairly creative. I also learned that not every part of making movies requires creativity.

But my natural talents only got me so far. If I wanted to become better, I would need to put work into it. So, I did.

Over the years, I accumulated a small collection of various books that teach how to write scripts, how to frame shots, how to light and color scenes, and how to edit them. Although I have not read all of them yet, I have gone through several of them and worked the learned material into new projects that I made at the same time.

I was introduced to another software a few years after the start of my filmmaking hobby. Blender is software for animation. Learning how to work with this technology which was completely new to me posed a challenge. But thankfully there are lots of tutorials on YouTube that explain how to model a simple human, how to rig an object, and how to use texture. As I worked through these, I slowly got a grasp of how this strange software works.

Finally, I had a more specific idea of what I wanted to do in my professional career. I want to become an animator. I made that decision not based on my talents but based on my interests and the skills that I had gotten through hours of work.

More than that, however, I proved my father wrong. I have a lot of talents and I surely have some that are helpful for filmmaking. Those are however not enough to make me great at it. This far my father was right. But he was wrong when he doubted my perseverance. I did what I set out to do: I got further than my talents alone were able to get me. I became genuinely good at making videos. I learned that talent only gets me so far. Putting work into it is what makes the difference.

Where there is a will there is a way.

I must have been around twelve years old when I first listened to the audiobook version of Stephen Hawking’s “George’s Secret Key to the Universe”. I remember lounging on the blue carpet in the middle of our small living room with my head propped up on my hands. The story fascinated me not because of the plot or the characters but because of the planets and stars that were described in the story. I found myself flicking through the book version afterward to read up on any information about space that I could find there. I quickly decided that I wanted to become an astronaut. I wanted to go to space and explore planets, comets, and stars. Black Holes were particularly fascinating to me. Of course, at that point, I didn’t know what goes into becoming an astronaut and I also didn’t know whether I was actually good enough.

Now, about ten years later, I can safely say that I am not anywhere close to becoming an astronaut.

Certainly, everyone has at one point in their life had a dream job; something they really want to do no matter how unrealistic it may be. In my case, I had several of these dreams throughout my life. The first one I can remember was to become an astronaut and go to space. Then I wanted to be an inventor and follow Da Vinci’s example. For a few years, I found my great passion for soccer, and I wanted to go pro. My last and by far longest desired job, however, was and to this day is to work in the film industry.

And I am lucky; I have a talent for almost all of these things. I am what is called a jack of all trades, master of none.

I have a great variety of interests. That paired with a great variety of talents gives me many options and opportunities to try and do all kinds of things. I play soccer and I am decent at it. I like to draw, and I am decent at it. I play the flute and I am decent at it. In school, I was fairly good in almost all of my classes without having to put much work into them.

However, I am nowhere good enough at any of them to become a professional athlete, artist, or musician – not with only my talent for all of these things. My talents aren’t good enough to make me great at any of them. Being great requires work for me.

I recall a conversation with my mother that I had a few years ago. I had brought up the topic of becoming a professional soccer player. As expected, she rejected the idea of me playing soccer professionally as soon as I mentioned it. Of course, she was worried about the fact that women don’t get paid well in sports, but I could tell that wasn’t her only or even her main worry. She doubted me. She doubted that I was good enough and she doubted that I would put in the work to become good enough.

For the next year or so, I went outside regardless of the weather and practiced my skills with the ball. I went on five-kilometer runs regularly and I frequently worked out at a gym. That was the fittest I had ever been.

That dream slowly changed when a different one materialized out of nowhere. Actually, that new dream had always been there somewhere, lying dormant in the depths of my consciousness. Something had triggered it, maybe it had to do with the fact that I found out, my cousin was studying movie directing. It was like a signal to me that working in movies was in fact not impossible and unrealistic.

Ever since I have had one career wish: I wanted to make movies. I knew that without a doubt. My father didn’t.

I told him about my dream on a few occasions but one in particular sticks out to me. This was probably the first time that I had mentioned that dream of mine to him. His reaction was immediate doubt and questioning my creativity. He had decided for himself that people who make movies must be creative. So, he told me that I was not creative enough. It was a punch to the gut for me. I wanted to do this so bad, I had never considered that I might not be good enough at it.

I had always known that my parents were very realistic people with a tendency to pessimism. On top of that, my father is an intelligent man. His words carried an enormous weight for me at that time which made his doubt that much more gut-wrenching and hurtful. But I am a stubborn person with a dream.

Despite that conversation, I sat down and googled which free video editing software there was. I downloaded one and started playing with it. The best way for me to learn almost anything is to learn by doing. So, I imported a video into the application and changed various settings, cut it, and added text. It didn’t take me long to pick up on the basics of the software.

Next, I figured out how to write scripts. I found out quickly that I am, in fact, fairly creative. I also learned that not every part of making movies requires creativity.

But my natural talents only got me so far. If I wanted to become better, I would need to put work into it. So, I did.

Over the years, I accumulated a small collection of various books that teach how to write scripts, how to frame shots, how to light and color scenes, and how to edit them. Although I have not read all of them yet, I have gone through several of them and worked the learned material into new projects that I made at the same time.

I was introduced to another software a few years after the start of my filmmaking hobby. Blender is software for animation. Learning how to work with this technology which was completely new to me posed a challenge. But thankfully there are lots of tutorials on YouTube that explain how to model a simple human, how to rig an object, and how to use texture. As I worked through these, I slowly got a grasp of how this strange software works.

Finally, I had a more specific idea of what I wanted to do in my professional career. I want to become an animator. I made that decision not based on my talents but based on my interests and the skills that I had gotten through hours of work.

More than that, however, I proved my father wrong. I have a lot of talents and I surely have some that are helpful for filmmaking. Those are however not enough to make me great at it. This far my father was right. But he was wrong when he doubted my perseverance. I did what I set out to do: I got further than my talents alone were able to get me. I became genuinely good at making videos. I learned that talent only gets me so far. Putting work into it is what makes the difference.

Where there is a will there is a way.

The Reprisal from 2018 was directed by Brian A. Miller and is an action film. It is starring Bruce Willis and Frank Grillo. Despite the well-known cast, it is largely very predictable and not very good.

The film starts with a bank robbery where the thief displays his ruthlessness and skill as he forces specific employees of the bank including the manager, Jacob (Grillo), to help him. He kills one of them during the robbery.

Jacob is dealing with the trauma of that experience and decides to track down the thief. While doing so, he gets help from his neighbor, James (Willis), who is a former police officer.

The situation gets out of hand when the robber kidnaps Jacob’s family, that is his wife and daughter.

Throughout the movie, Jacob displays reckless and somewhat obsessive behavior. It is not quite clear why he seems to be so adamant about tracking the robber down. Others were involved in robbery too. None of them try to track the man down.

As he works on finding the thief, he gets himself into unnecessarily dangerous situations and doesn’t seem to care or reconsider. He follows the thief after the latter shot someone despite not wearing any protection.

A few other parts of the plot don’t make much sense either. James’ involvement in all of this seems a little random. He may be a former police officer but that doesn’t mean he would get himself involved in this. There doesn’t really appear to be a good, specific reason for Jacob to talk to James about his intentions to find the thief. And even if he did, why does James help him?

The protagonist is stubborn throughout the whole movie and doesn’t seem to have much character development except for the very beginning and the very end. He barely listens to anyone and locks everyone out. When James tries to talk to him about what Jacob’s goal is, James is doubtful but Jacob doesn’t listen to him.

One thing that led to some confusion was the similarity between the protagonist and the antagonist. Especially at the beginning of the film, both appeared in separate scenes which made it difficult to understand what was going on.

The action scenes are not very impressive, and neither is the dialogue. There are a lot of conversations, but none are particularly emotional and gripping. Even when Jacob deals with his trauma from the robbery, there are no emotions in the acting or the script that really get across to the audience and let them understand how he is doing.

The cinematography and color are mediocre to where it seems like the white balance is the only thing that was paid attention to for the most part. Therefore, the look is neutral and in no way interesting either.

Because of some violence, this movie’s main audience is adults, mostly younger and middle-aged ones. In comparison to the kind of action movies that are made nowadays, this movie is simply disappointing and boring.

The movie’s biggest problem is the fact that it is simply very predictable and lacks any kind of plot twists or anything else to make it interesting to watch. The plot is flat just like the dialogue.

The movie looks like a typical, low-budget action film that is uninteresting and frankly boring to watch.

This film receives 1 out of four stars.

Although Stephen King is better known for horror stories and “Batman and Robin Have an Altercation” is not horror, it is still worth a read. The story has a slow, inconspicuous start and builds up to an unexpected end. It is written well with good, fitting descriptions. It is fairly short and gets to the point. There are no unnecessary details in there.

This story’s main character is a man who is taking his elderly father out for brunch on Sundays. His father has Alzheimer’s and is diabetic which makes some of their conversations somewhat repetitive. Both of the characters are having brunch, as usual on a Sunday. What starts as a normal interaction between a father with Alzheimer’s and a son turns into a conversation about past memories. Surprisingly, the father seems to remember some of it. This somewhat unexpected turn of events foreshadows the even more unexpected end.

Two friends are having a conversation while they are standing in line at a supermarket to checkout. The topic of the conversation is everchanging and nothing of importance. It’s their turn. They still don’t stop talking. The conversation only comes to a short break when one of them goes to pay. The cashier who has heard some of their conversation uses the short break to satisfy their curiosity. “If you don’t mind me asking, where are you from?”

This is a scene that could have taken place not only in a supermarket, but also in a restaurant, at work, or even out in the open on the street. When people hear accents, they get curious. Such has been the experience of Freja Brix Rasmussen and Lucia Kruize.

Both Rasmussen and Kruize, are from Denmark. They are international students in the US and have been here for over a year. Despite their good knowledge of the English language, both of them unmistakably speak the language with an accent. That accent is a source for curiosity for strangers, both of them said.

“As soon as I talk to a stranger I always get asked where I am from. They don’t try to offend me, but sometimes have no idea where Denmark even is or can’t understand that I could prefer Europe over the U.S”, Freja Brix Rasmussen stated.

Questions like “Where are you from?”, “Do you like it here compared to there?”, or “What are some differences?” are some of the typical ones Kruize gets asked by strangers who hear her talk for the first time.

Accents evidently intrigue people. Both Rasmussen and Kruize, agree that the reactions they get are usually positive ones that are sparked by simple curiosity. However, this curiosity can also get annoying, Rasmussen noted, when she is not trying to start a conversation, but her accent attracts attention which is usually followed by questions.

Another thing that people do sometimes when they hear accents is to try and imitate them. Kruize explained that it happened to her once and that those imitations can be irritating.

Imitations are however also how people learn languages, according to Kira Ketelsen who studied languages and currently lives in Germany.

 She has no accent when she speaks German. Many of her coworkers don’t even know that she is not German until Ketelsen mentions it to them.

Kira Ketelsen is in actuality from Saint Petersburg, Russia. She grew up and studied there. Ketelsen was already an adult when she moved to Germany.

Ketelsen had a good education in school. In fact, she added that the schools in Saint Petersburg were known for their good language classes. On top of that, her school had extended German classes. Ketelsen went on to study German and English at an educational university in Saint Petersburg.

That education is certainly part of the reason why she speaks German without an accent. However, she also added that each language has its own melodic flow. How questions are asked is different in each language, for instance. In different languages, the pitch of the voice goes up or down at different times in the sentence.

“I have heard from Russians that when I speak German, I speak differently than when I speak Russian”, she explained.

Ketelsen argues that it helps to have musical talent because that makes it easier to hear and imitate this melodic flow that languages have.

“In the end, learning a language is mimicking. Meaning you listen, you simply repeat everything you heard”, she stated.

Another thing that she pointed out is that it is helpful to learn languages early. The earlier languages are learned, the better the pronunciation will be.

Overall, because she learned German very early on and because of her good ear for music, she is fluent in the language now and has no accent, she reasoned.

However, despite her lack of an accent when she speaks German, the same is not true for English. During her time in England, she was clearly identified as a non-native English speaker. However, her accent in English is a strange one that was misplaced a lot, according to her. Apparently, she sounded very French as she was told by her peers.

Still, people in England and in the US mostly react with positive intrigue when they hear accents, Ketelsen, Kruize, and Rasmussen agree.

“If you don’t mind me asking, where are you from?” is therefore not a bad question as long as it can be answered quickly and isn’t followed by a long conversation.